


The Doctor’s Thrall

by caprigender



Series: Lumen Medicus [1]
Category: Campaign (Podcast), Campaign: Skyjacks (Podcast)
Genre: Ch 1: a woman saves her father in law from amputation, Ch 2: the immortal horse, Ch 3: some friends argue like nerds about card meanings, Gen, Luminary Dref Wormwood, brief descriptions of gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24186484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caprigender/pseuds/caprigender
Summary: A series of drabbles exploring people being influenced by a strange new Luminary. Who are they? What is their deal? One things for sure, we can’t be afraid just because we don’t understand
Series: Lumen Medicus [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745599
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	1. Miriam and the Hazel Tree

There are secrets in the twisting threads of a spider’s web.

You can’t know what lies at the bottom of the river without braving its hateful currents.

A ghost won’t tell you why it’s there if all you do is run from it.

-

Miriam’s father-in-law should have died from his accident on the edge of the forest. At the very least he should have lost his leg. It should have cost him more than an axe, his daughter’s wife’s favorite apron, and a few months of bed rest, that’s for certain. You don’t go cutting hazel trees that close to the Queen’s domain unless you’re desperate or very very stupid.

Miriam didn’t see what happened, she only saw the aftermath. With lungs burning and heart pounding she ran towards the screaming. A trail of forage scattered in her wake, an entire morning’s worth of morels slipping past apron stripes of green and gray and a tattered hem of simple homespun lace. She found him as the last of the mushrooms tumbled from her pockets. He was beneath the trees. He was beside the tree. In his panic he had torn himself free. He had torn himself apart. 

Miriam didn’t faint when she saw the blood and bits of bone sticking out from the meat she barely recognized as part of her dear Tisha’s father. She thought that she might faint, but she did not. She thought that she might be sick, but she stayed upright through that as well. Her body seemed frozen in place, standing sturdy and fixed like a tent pole driven too deep into the hard packed earth.

“What do I do?” She thought, her mind twisting in panic as the screams echoed in the glade around her. “Mercy of the Luminaries, what am I supposed to do?”

Another wave of nausea hit her full force and Miriam dropped to her knees, certain that this time she would pass out and her wife’s father would bleed to death right beside her. It didn’t come. The world spun and righted itself again and there was something else inside the churning of her bile. An eye appeared in the hurricane of her nausea and panic and it whispered to her. Bandages. You need a splint and bandages. And a tourniquet. He’ll probably lose the leg, but let’s see what we can do.

Miriam nodded. She wasn’t sure who she was nodding to. She didn’t have time to consider it, she’d wasted too much already. Her apron tore along green and grey stripes. The axe head split the handle roughly even. She knew better than to use splints from the tree that had enacted its revenge.

Her father-in-law’s voice was barely a croak as she tied the tourniquet around his thigh. She lined up the splinters of bone and wrapped them tightly. Green and grey. Green and grey. Green and grey and slowly spreading red.

That’s where Tisha and Setim and Tisha’s mother found her, winding round green and grey. They called for a sledge and the four of them brought him back to the cabin on the edge of the village.

They tried to shoo her from the room. Hadn’t she been through enough? She had done all she could. What a brave woman. What a dutiful daughter-in-law. But Tisha’s eyes were still red rimmed and worried and Miriam’s mother-in-law had her jaw set in a grim line. They knew the likelihood of his survival in a small village in the shadow of the forest. The nearest doctor was over a days walk away. And the maelstrom of nausea still spoke to Miriam from inside of her. In a voice without words it agreed with her mother-in-law’s predictions and it urged her to do more.

Miriam set the old stew pot to boil sweet water from the untainted well. She made a soup of her sewing kit and set the needles and thread to cool as she sliced through green and grey stained muddy dark. Through the day and night she tipped about on the stool like a woman flush with wine. Through the day and night she stitched and she sewed and she pulled bone and body to one. Through the day and night she rewrapped the wounds. Her wife gathered elderberries for a fever tea. Her mother in law washed new linens for bandages.

Open the window, the cyclone of fear whispered to her. Let the breeze come through. And Miriam opened every window and propped the doors open with stools and pots and heavy stones.

The bleeding stopped. The fever passed. Miriam’s father in law woke and smiled and there wasn’t enough of Miriam for the whole family to hug and shake and hold to them with sobbing gratitude.

The doctor arrived and inspected the wound with eyes wide behind her brass rimmed spectacles. It should have been much worse, she claimed. He was lucky to have his leg. He was lucky to have his life. She shook Miriam’s hand, the two of them reflecting eachother’s astonishes wonder. The storm inside of Miriam had faded away, the memory of it still there but so strange and distant that she knew what it had to have been.

“I asked the Luminaries to help me,” she says every time her wife boasts of her beloved’s heroism.

“And who answered?” they sometimes ask, when they do not roll their eyes and chide her for being too modest.

And Miriam looks up from her spinning, or from her peeling vegetables, or from the hot drink she has cupped in her hands wrapped in the grey and blue stripes of a new favorite apron and she says, “I don’t rightly know yet. But I will. Someday I will.”


	2. Gabriella DuPont’s Horse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did you know there was a horse named Old Billy who lived to be 62? I didn’t

Gabriella DuPont’s horse was too damn stupid to know how to die.

The old roan was older than sin and he’d broken more legs than you could count on one hand, or so the stories said. You might not know much about horses in this world of griffins and lion birds, but most horses don’t survive a single break. Forget about several. So, simply stated, the stories couldn’t be true.

Looking at the old thing you could sure believe em, though.

Gabriella’s roan was the meanest, nastiest looking horse any traveler had ever laid eyes on. His mane and tail were tangled, no matter how many times she brushed them out and braided them up. The white streak in his forelock was always a dusty and dingy grey. His bones jutted out at all angles beneath fur that was caked and crusted with drying mud. No one quite knew how the beast kept finding mud puddles to roll in even with summer droughts dragging on. No one quite knew how such a rickety creature managed to roll in the mud and get back up again all in one piece. 

On Saturday Gabriella DuPont scrubbed her horse down and brushed the dirt from his fur. She detangled his mane and braided it up with ribbons and flowers. She cleaned out his shoes and polished his hooves. When she was done he still looked like death, but at least he looked a clean death. 

By Sunday morning he was back the way he liked.

“Why do you bother?” The traveler asked Gabriella DuPont. “Why waste your time on that thing when you could have a lark or a dove? Surely they’re prettier and far more useful at that.”

Gabriella DuPont laughed, her voice harsh with ale and age. “Well I don’t have a connection to any larks or doves now do I? No lark or dove ever won me any horse show trophies.”

Well, surely not. A lark or a dove or any other griffin could not have won Ms. DuPont any horse show trophies, but it did seem far-fetched that the old roan could have delivered anything other than stubbornness and disease.

“Don’t try to boggle me,” the traveler said, “There hasn’t been a horse show in this town in over thirty years.”

“More like forty six,” Gabriella corrected. “We won the jumping course. And the log pull. And dressage, but only barely.”

And when she said “we” she surely meant the horse she raced with. And when she said “we” she certainly implied it was the old roan. And when she placed down her ale she had a sly smile on her face as if she knew what she said was ridiculous, as if she was waiting for someone to call her bluff. Horses do not live to be forty six, even city born bird riders know that much.

“That isn’t possible,” is what the traveler wanted to say. “There is no way that what you say could possibly be true. You’re a liar and I’m not the gullible fool you think I am.”

Instead the traveler licked their lips and asked, “How?”

Gabriella DuPont looked around the empty room as if the walls might hear her, as if she was not alone in her own home with the strange young person she’d offered a night or two of shelter. She leaned in over the table and the traveler leaned in too, pulled closer by the silent promise of secret knowledge.

“I braided silk into his hair,” she whispered, “on the night before the show, under a clear sky and a full moon. I braided my favorite scrap of white silk ribbon into my Dusty’s forelock. And I cut my thumb on my knife and promised him we would always be together. We would be together until I died, until the end of all time.”

The traveler shivered as they recognized the Truth and Power in Gabriella DuPont’s words. “You could have died,” they said.

“I probably should have,” Gabriella agreed. “Can you imagine? Promising to die at the same time as your horse? We should have tumbled down a cliff and snapped our necks the very same night.” She laughed, but all the traveler felt was a sick sort of dismay. “I remembered those words many times over the years. Every time we rode a trail. Every time he stumbled and fell. Every broken leg, every cracked hoof. But I always survived and he always got better.”

“You must have been very lucky,” the traveler said.

Gabriella nodded, “The Luminaries were merciful to me.”

They fell silent in the stuffy summer heat. Gabriella stared idly into her mug. The traveler ran their fingers along the whirls in the table. Outside, a very old horse let out a halfhearted whinny. The traveler looked towards the window.

“Do you think…” they began, “Are you ever worried that perhaps… with your wording…”

Gabriella DuPont took another drink of her ale. “Sometimes I worry,” she admitted, “but if I’m going to be cursed to live to the end of time, at least I know I’ll always have my best friend too.”


	3. An Illuminating Argument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some friends have a friendly discussion on the meaning of Illimat cards in sailor's readings

“Wait,” Imad said, “I don’t understand. Is it like the butcher?”

Montoya’s “Yes” and Palmer’s “No” came out simultaneously and with equal force. The two of them looked at eachother with confusion and newfound frustration. Until a few seconds before they had been allies in this metaphysical dispute. Now it seemed like they had found a breaking point. 

Abeni laughed. “So neither of you actually know what you’re talking about,” he said, his face crinkled up in a grin. “I should have known this whole thing was nonsense.”

“You like nonsense,” Imad accused and Abeni held up his hands.

“Guilty,” he admitted. He took a handful of nuts from the bowl in the middle of the table. “I am enjoying this.”

Palmer turned her chair with a scraping sound, her full attention fixed on Montoya. “How the hell is the Butcher like the Physician?”

Montoya looked almost as confused as Palmer sounded, as if the answer was so obvious that anyone could see it. Imad’s eyes darted between the two as they argued. “How isn’t the doctor like the butcher? Cold, impersonal dismemberment? Dispassionate vivisection?” Montoya tapped the cards laid out on the tabe. The Butcher card’s fractured skull reflected the skull-like face of the masked doctor. “It’s all about viewing humans as meat. Whether that means meat for consumption or meat for some twisted academic purpose makes no difference.”

“That is NOT what the themes of the Physician are,” Palmer hissed, her raspberry drink forgotten and already growing cold, “you’re completely disregarding the positive nuance. Yes, the physician is not a card you want to pull in a reading because it means something bad is going to happen, but they’re also supposed to represent an ally coming to you during those difficult times. They’re knowledgeable. They’re an expert. They’re supposed to be helpful.”

Montoya shook their head. “No, no, if you’re looking for healing subtext that’s the Matron. The Doctor is supposed to represent the destructive forces of this sort of thing. Constantly seeking knowledge at the expense of everyone else and their own humanity. They try to force everything into categories, expose the mysteries of the world in cold, dispassionate logical arguments. There’s no room for anything else. There’s no room for wonder.”

Abeni tapped the table for attention, “Hey, Imad, isn’t that like the one guy we met in T’shirt? He had a card in his deck like that. Curiosity and learning but it was also about how picking things apart does two things-”

“The pursuit of knowledge can preserve or destroy, yeah,” Imad nodded, “I remember that one, he pulled it for you in a sailor’s reading, didn’t he?”

“Mh,” Abeni ran a hand over the scruff of his bead, eyes focused on some point off above Palmer’s head. “What was it called? The professor? Or maybe the archivist?”

“The academic!” Imad cried. Abeni nodded with excitement and raised his glass to meet Imad’s canteen.

“The Academic! Yes, that’s the one!” his face rearranged into something haughty and dispassionate, an exact manners replica of the skyjack the two had met back in T’shirt. “You seek the truth of things. Your curiosity is not something you can learn to leave alone. Be careful with your digging as it may uncover things that should have been left alone. Remember, investigation can destroy its subject as well as bring it to light.” Abeni gestured to his arguing crewmates, “Does that sound like your doctor?”

Montoya shook their head in a vague, considering gesture, “I guess it could? Doesn’t really get at the scalpels and knives aspect.”

Palmer bristled, “Removing an infected limb is not the same as butchering someone for fun.” Montoya grimaced and was about to answer when Abeni interrupted.

“I know something that could get the two of you agreeing again,” he said. His ship mates looked at him and waited for him to continue. He popped a few more nuts in his mouth and crunched, reveling in the casual tension. “The guy from T’shirt? He still played with the Sovereign card in his deck.”

Both Palmer and Montoya were on their feet, yelling with outrage before Imad had a chance to brace for the wall of indignation. Imad sighed and looked at Abeni, grinning in the new form of chaos and meta turmoil he’d just unleashed. After a moment, Abeni returned their gaze and raised his glass.

“Illimat,” he laughed, “controversial stuff.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I've been reading a lot more about tarot and its really fun and cool and i like comparing the two decks that i have cause some of the major arcana is different and that's basically what I wanted to explore here  
> (you just wait until mr james damato comes out with the book of all this luminary business he's written and i dont have to go digging through episode backlog or just making shit up on my own, then its over for u hos)
> 
> if you wanna discuss this nonsense with me more (like the more negative aspects of the doctor luminary card or potential other regional luminaries) im also caprigender on tumblr, or you could leave a comment right here on this chapter


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